Keep searching, you're bound to find something!

The New York Times reports that the space shuttle Discovery had:

" cameras on the launching pad, cameras aloft on planes monitoring the ascent, cameras on the shuttle checking for missing foam on the external fuel tank, and a camera on the tank itself. One camera caught a mysterious object falling from the shuttle at liftoff; radar detected another, about two minutes into the flight. Cameras aboard the shuttle and the International Space Station will monitor the Discovery until the end of its mission."

Ordinarily, more data are better. If you study a "Black Box" you want to probe it with as many inputs as you can, measure the outputs, and try to discern what's inside. The more data you have, the better you can tell something. Not so with Discovery.

As the Times article notes, more data on the shuttle could lead to more worries, more investigations, and more tests. However, such data, while true, may not be cause for any concerns. The fact that a camera discovers something does not imply that there's a problem. Moreover, there may be nothing you can do in any case. And, as if that's not enough, fixing the problem may cause other problems that were not there before the fix!

As the article notes, in medicine a physician can do lots of tests. But oftentimes the tests pick-up items that are irrelevant to patient health, or wouldn't develop into problems until well after the patient is dead. Knowing about them doesn't help the patient. In fact, it may prompt the patient to seek treatment where the treatment side effects are worse then the may-never-to-appear disease.

We have to remember what we learned in school: Sometimes,

Less really is more!

Shuttle launched!

The shuttle Discovery had a successful launch this morning. YES! It's great that the program is moving forward. While flying the shuttle will be a dangerous mission for a long time to come, it's right that we go on to fly more and more. This is good not just for the program itself, but for the country and for everyone, in fact, to see that man continues to explore the universe. We should be expanding our space explorations beyond the shuttle to visit planets as soon as we can. The journey to space is a challenge we should meet.

1 in 100: How do you know?

NASA said the chance of failure with the shuttle launch (that was, in fact, successful YAY!) is 1 in a 100. How do they know that? According to the New York Times, NASA
" combines the findings of flight experience, computer simulations and expert judgment to assess how the shuttle's millions of parts will work or fail in varying situations."

Now this is just bunk. Sure, NASA can test systems and subsystems. Test parts for integrity under varying conditions, but it cannot test the entire shuttle until it flies. There have been 113 flights with two (2) catastrophic failures. It is impossible to quantify just what the chances are (probabilities, if you will) for failure. There just are NOT enough tests to know. That said, NASA still has to decide if the launch should go or not. In the end it's a decision based on little more than guess work.

Science Hotel

The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel has built a hotel for science. Well, not exactly for science but rather, a hotel to house students so that they can learn about science. The cost is free and the idea is that students from the country will stay there and study "life science, physics, chemistry, biotechology, electro-optics and environmental quality."


I hope more countries will follow this example, notably the United States. In fact, this week's Fortune magazine (I'll have to look for the URL; I read this in the print edition) talked of America's need for science to stay competitive. More on that later.

Integer Sequeces: An On-Line Look-Up

Here's a fascinating site that I've only just begun to explore. It's an online encyclopedia for looking up integer sequences. Say you have a sequence like:
1, 4, 9, 16
and you want to know what the next number might be. Or, you want to know of a relationship between these numbers. Go to this site, type in the sequence and it'll return:
Well, I thought it would quickly tell me that this is a sequence of squares:
1*1=1
2*2=4
3*3=9
4*4=16
But, that didn't come right back. Instead I got the following:
Triangle giving a(n,r) = number of equivalence classes of Boolean
functions of n variables and range r=0..2^n under action of symmetric
group.

Triangular array T read by rows: T(n,k)=k^2 mod n, for
k=1,2,...,[n/2], n=2,3,...

Triangle T(n,k), 0<=k<=n, giving coefficients when output
sequence O_0, O_1, O_2, ... from transformation described in A059216
is expressed in terms of input sequence I_0, I_1, I_2, ...

Triangle read by rows giving numbers of paths in a lattice satisfying
certain conditions.

Array of coefficients of x in the expansions of
T(k,x)=(1+kx-(k-2)x^2)/(1-x)^4, k>-4.

Array read by antidiagonals, generated by the matrix M =
[1,1,1;1,N,1;1,1,1];.

Define predecessors of n, P(n), to consist of numbers whose binary
representation is obtained from that of n by replacing 10 by 01 or
changing a final 1 to a 0; then a(0)=1, a(n) = Sum f(P(n)), n>0.

The pattern is obvious.

s(1)t(n) + s(2)t(n-1) + ... + s(k)t(n-k+1), where k = [ n/2 ], s = (odd
natural numbers)


Squares arising in p=x^2+n, where p is the smallest prime of this form.
Smallest q squares > 0 so that q+n is a prime.

n^2 mod 18.

n^2 mod 19.

Finally, I saw something I was thinking of when I wrote the sequence, although I had not thought of the modular part.

Anyway, even though I got an unexpected answer, the site still looks pretty neat.

By the way, this is an example of what's wrong with someone being asked to "find the next number." If you don't know the rule, then there's nothing to say that whatever rule you want to use is not the correct rule. That is, without a criteria to select the rule, any rule can do. I believe this is the "Ugly Duck Theorem," but more on that later.

Secure Wireless Technology

Sandia National Labs has recently developed secure wireless technology. According to the article this is a new idea. I am not so sure as to what's new. We now have wireless technology and we have encryption technology for wireless communications.

I think the new area here is that this wireless is ultra-wideband so that it difficult to detect and particularly difficult to jam. Current wireless technology is easy to detect, easier to jam. So, that is something new.

This will hurt you more than it'll hurt me

A new study shows that women feel pain more often than men and over more of their body than men.

I always thought this was true but who could say such a thing without being a chauvinist? Now, we "know" it to be true.

Go Ahead: Exercise!

It's the summer time and exercise is a great way to spend your time. I had thought that jogging would be bad for one's knees, but this article in ScienceDaily notes that jogging isn't too bad on your knees. We all know that exercise is good for you in many ways: better fitness for less illness (exercise helps your immune system), lowers the incidences of depression, release of endorphins that make you feel good, and just generally boosts your spirits.

So, get out and have fun.